Sophocles, Antigone

See also Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim.

1. What, if anything, does the chorus contribute to our understanding of Sophocles’ Antigone?
2. Examine the relationship between language and power in Antigone and/or Antigone’s Claim.
3. What is the relationship between kinship ties and the state in Antigone?
4. Why does Antigone return to the body of Polyneices?
5. “So condemned, I will find a new place, / not a home, a spinster’s residence, with them, / with Polyneices—doomed young by alliance…” (p. 55). With reference to Antigone’s Claim, discuss the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices.
6. “The blind must walk where others lead.” (p. 59) What significance might this line have for the play as a whole?
7. Explore the role of the title character of Antigone.

See also Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim.

1. Consider the significance of the following comment by Tiresias to the overall themes you identify in the play Antigone: “Nobles of Thebes,/ We two have come one common path,/ One man watching the way for both./ The blind must walk where others lead.” (59)
2. It has been suggested that Antigone is “not human.” What might motivate such a view, and is it defensible?.
3. What is the relationship between language and power in Antigone?
4. The German philosopher Hegel regards Antigone as a tragic stalemate between two equally justifiable views. Suggest why this is, or is not, a persuasive reading.
5. What does the chorus in Antigone add to the overall meaning and impact of the play?
6. Why does Creon tell Haemon that it is worse to give way to a woman than a man? What does the play as a whole suggest about the place of women?
7. Using the criteria of good government established by Plato in Republic, what sort of ruler would he find in Creon and/or how happy would he be to have Sophocles’ version of the story performed in the “Kalipolis” should it come into being?
8. Explore the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices and its connection to her attitude to married life.
9. “I come as a stranger always to the home hearth/ of humans and spirits both, / an alien only, among the living and the dead” (Sophocles 54). In what way(s) does it make sense to think of Antigone as a stranger, an alien?
10. Compare the use of the imagery of the ship of state in Plato’s Republic and Sophocles’ Antigone.